Steel Angels
by Shinagami
Summary: Follow up to WWII Eva **Not a sequel** read it and stuff
1. Raining Shrapnel

Hey there.....it's me again, yeah.... that guy. Anyway I heard your calls for a sequel to WWII Eva and, well.......here it is. It can't fairly be called a sequel, though. This takes place a few days before D-Day, but the characters have different roles. (And Toji's not dreaming this one up either! ^_^) I plan to make it several chapters long, so they're going to be short. Enjoy!

Steel Angels part one: Raining Shrapnel

_ So Toji turns to me and says, 'Hey! Where's Shinji going?' And I say back. 'Says he's going for some chow in town'..... Right, we all knew he had a date with a hottie._

Aida Kensuke, P-51 pilot of the Vermillion Team.

Shinji had found his way into another hairball, going one on one with a Fw-190. He grunted as he was pushed against the left wall of his cockpit, his blue trimmed P-51 doing an Immelman. He had no clue what he was going to do to get his ass outta the mess he'd gotten it into, but whatever it was it was going to have to be good, and quick...the jerry was trying to shoot it's 20mm cannons down his throat.

"Suzahara, Kensuke, form up on me. Bearing two-delta-three." Shinji spun his ship into a barrel roll that seemed like an amusement park ride. As he came out of the spin two other gleaming fighters aligned themselves on either wing, and the three of them managed to shake the throng of German planes that seemed to spew from the sky itself. Shinji frowned and dropped his targeting receptacle over the tail of a 190 and opened fire, holing it up good. He watched as it fell from the sky, colliding with another headed after the B-17 they were protecting.

"Lieutenant Ikari! I have a couple of bogies on my ass! Hey! Shinji! Can I get some love over here?" Kensuke's ship rolled towards the ground twenty thousand feet below him. If he'd calculated it right, the jerry should be following him exactly. Shinji saw the plane following Kensuke and dived after it. He thumbed the trigger for half a second as a 190 raced past his field of vision after Toji and then released a blast of sustained fire that chewed the German plane's cockpit canopy off and sent a flare of fire rolling over the rest of the ship. Before Shinji had a chance to pull out of the dive it exploded, and Shinji flew straight into the middle of the expanding blast.

"Damn, damn, damn...." Shinji grunted as the cockpit darkened while flying through the debris cloud. He burst from the other end unharmed, but his forward windshield was smeared with copper blood. Shinji's face paled and he almost forgot to right his plane.

"Yo! Shinji! You're losing altitude man!" Kensuke's mocking voice came in over the tac net.

As he yanked back on the stick Shinji looked behind him, the enemy squadron that had lost about sixty percent of its planes was high-tailing it.

"Yeeehaaaaw! They're buggin' out!" Toji's victory call rang out. Shinji pulled along side the bomber and saluted. The other pilot nodded and waved.

"Thanks little buddies!" He said as Shinji's team veered south and ascended.

The air around the Eighth Air Force base always seemed to crackle with electricity, with ships coming, going, making emergency landings...it was a wonder the traffic controllers didn't go mad. It scared Shinji every time he had to make a landing in the middle of the night- and this time was no different.

"Throttle down......flaps out.....nose up........." Shinji went through the landing procedure and felt the tires make contact with the runway below him. He immediately cut the thrust down to twenty-five percent and let the tail wheel tap the pavement. Shinji let out a breath he didn't know he was holding and taxied to the waiting hangar and tech crews.

"Nice flying out there, Shinji." Major Misato Katsuragi said from the wing of a B-24. She climbed down the service ladder to stand in front of the Lieutenant,

"Um...thanks...." Shinji said tiredly and threw a sloppy salute.

Misato laughed and shoved Shinji, sending him reeling into Toji and Kensuke who had joined their commanding officer.

"Hey, watch it!" Toji yelled. "Uh... I mean. Excuse us Major." He added after the look Misato gave him. Shinji stood up and motioned for his subordinates to follow him. They meandered through the mess hall looking for a place to sit. Chow time was never fun for any one in Vermillion squadron.

" Well! If it isn't Vermin Team and the Invincible Shinji!"

" Bomb any schools lately?" 

" Wonder if he screwed the Major again." 

These were the usual insults thrown at the fighter team. And those were just the tech crews. Later when the bomber teams or the P-40 squads got in it would be real hell.

"Geeze, mess up a couple times and you're tagged for life." Kensuke muttered as he sat down next to Shinji, who was holding Toji back from beating a maintenance officer's face in.

"I can't believe your going to let them get away with that!" Toji growled as he reluctantly let the technician live. "They keep saying you and the Major are an item."

Shinji shrugged. "Let them think what they want, they're not the enemy." He stuffed a forkful of some slop called stew into his mouth. Shinji dismissed the insults for many reason, namely because he didn't want to remember the past mistakes he made. But there was one thing that everyone in the Eighth battalion agreed with about Vermillion Team ...every pilot was a tiger in the air, and the bomber crews would be caught arguing over who would get Verm squad as their cover.

"You guys be sure to get some sleep tonight. Mission tomorrow." Shinji said and got up to leave. He could feel the eyes following him as he left the mess hall, but right now all he could concentrate on was getting past base security and into town.

Asuka Langley Soryou landed her Fw-190. It had been a complete failure of a day and she was in no mood to put up with her commanding officer's boorish blathering. She took a deep breath and entered his office.

"Captain Soryou! What was your mission objective?!" Colonel Fuyustuki bellowed.

Asuka gritted her teeth to keep from cussing the old fart out. "To destroy all bombers and bomber escorts."

Fuyustuki crossed his arms. "And what did your squadron accomplish?"

"We damaged two bombers and-" Asuka started.

"And lost three aircraft!" Kozo Fuyustuki was out of his leather commander's chair and standing over the redhead.

"Well if you'd give us something better than those crappy Focke-wulfs then maybe we'd stand a better chance against the enemy!"

"The Fw-190s are top of the line!" Asuka glared at the radar technician with glasses who'd just argued with her.

"You're kidding! The 190s stall out during a simple roll twist!"

"You must be throttling to low then! The fuel injectors can't function at such high altitude!" 

Fuyustuki sighed and rubbed his temples. He was the only one who was supposed to be yelling.

"Enough. Captain, fail again and I'm demoting you, Lieutenant Mokota, I suggest you be manning your station." With that he turned his back to the two of them and stared out the window. Asuka grumbled and stormed out to her barracks, the only thing consoling her now was the promise of seeing the handsome man she'd been sneaking out of base to meet with in town for the past three weeks now. She opened her footlocker and pulled out the only civilian outfit she had- a yellow sundress- and pulled it on. Personally she hated it, but it was the only thing she could get her hands on, and her date never seemed to mind.

An American pilot took a seat by the window in the cafe. The waiters there all new his face and always gave him the window seat, where he'd meet her. He looked up as she pulled the chair out and sat across from him. His eyes lingered on the flowing dress, like they always did.

"Hey." He said, in awe of her beauty. She smiled back and said something in German. For the past three weeks both of them had talked of their problems and their fears, while the other listened, never understanding but enjoying the other's voice.

"I hate my commanding officer...he's such a bastard..." She said crossly.

The pilot laughed, he didn't know the details of what she'd said, but she sounded pissed.

"I wonder if this war in going to end anytime soon. Every time I climb into that plane I'm afraid I'll never come back." He frowned as he thought about the three planes that had gotten shot down that day. They were never coming back. "In case I don't make it out of my mission tomorrow, I want you to have this." He handed her a medal in the shape of a heart with words at the bottom. She took it and smiled.

"For me? It's beautiful. Hey....this is a purple heart medal. You were wounded?" She showed a look of concern on her face.

"I don't need it, I guess I never liked all that attention anyway." He looked at his aviator's watch. "Damn, I have to get back to base."

"Gotta go, huh? Well, until tomorrow." She slipped her new gift into a small green satchel and watched him leave. "Wonder who you are." She pulled the medal out and gave the words a long look. "For bravery under fire and courage while being wounded- Shinji Ikari."

Shinji Ikari throttled his ship to full and rose to cruising altitude. He looked to his left, Toji and Kensuke were flying below and slightly behind him. He sighed and resigned himself to shiver in the coldness of high-altitude flight and mind rotting boredom. At 06:00 a.m. the dark sky had nothing to offer the pilot. Below and behind him were eight B-29s, loaded to the brim and ready to bring the jerries pain.

//I wonder where that girl is.// Shinji thought. At times like this his mind often wandered to the girl in the yellow dress, the enigma of it all reminded Shinji of a romance novel all the girls read in school. // I bet she's just a regular civilian. Maybe she goes to a university near here. Or maybe-// Shinji's thoughts were interrupted by the familiar sound of 20mm bullets tearing the sky apart. He looked around, his wingmen already rolling their ships into evasive maneuvers. Shinji pitched his P-51 nose first at the ground and went into a power dive that would rip the wings off any other fighter. 

Asuka opened fire at the shining blue trimmed plane in front of her, riddling it with holes. It banked hard right and pulled up abruptly and looped around again, putting it behind her. 

"No you don't!" Asuka cut the throttle back to thirty percent and let readied herself for the enemy to fly over her. 

"Rookie." Shinji said as he spun his ship onto it's back and matching speeds with the German plane.

He looked up (down, in terms of gravity) at the pilot of the jerry. 

From behind her flight goggles and helmet Asuka stared right into the eyes of the enemy fighter pilot. "Show off....." Asuka grunted as she spiraled her plane around his. Shinji kept his plane's canopy above the German's at all times, he couldn't tear his eyes away from those blue eyes... //Those eyes! It's her! It can't be!//

"Idiot! Are you trying to kill us both?!" Asuka yelled at the American. He wouldn't let her level out, always keeping parallel with her cockpit, both of them spiraling around, dancing in between the flak bursts from the ground and the bomber cover fire.

Shinji heard his radio crackle to life. " Lieutenant! The bombers need your help!" Toji's unmistakably irritated voice cut through the betrayal and confusion Shinji was feeling. He pulled up sharply, letting loose a barrage that tore through the engine of a 190 and blew it to pieces.

He looked behind him as the Fw-190- her ship- came around and blazed away at the number four bomber. //I can't shoot her down, I can't!" Shinji though his head would explode. He couldn't let the bomber go down for a variety of reasons, but he couldn't shoot _her_ down either.

"Grrr....All planes descend! Altitude 14,000!" Shinji yelled and poured fire into a 190 converging on Kensuke, the tracers lighting up the early morning sky.

"Shinji! Are you crazy? Those flak emplacements will Swiss cheese our bombers!" Toji yelled.

Shinji made a pass over the fuselage of the B-29, guns blaring away at the retreating 190. "Just do it!"

Kensuke, however understood. "The jerries won't follow or they'll be caught in the cross fire! So we can drive them upwards away from our bombers and blow the hell outta them, right?"

Shinji smiled, despite all the teasing they'd given him, Kensuke _was_ a master tactician. "Yeah, now go!"

"Take this you bastards!" Toji strafed the cockpit of a Fw-190, blowing the pilot into flares of red against the windscreen. Asuka's squadron had taken enough, they were losing. 

"Remaining units, converge on me, we're outta here!" She growled at the blue fighter diving through the clouds. //I can't believe that....that _American_ out performed me!// She slammed her fist into the instrument console.

Later after Vermillion Team had landed and were being debriefed Shinji wondered why he couldn't bring himself to shoot down the German pilot. //Was it because she was a woman? Or was it because I've met her?// 

Shinji didn't go into town that night, instead he retired to his bunk, listening to Toji tell one of the bomber gunners about how he had invented a reverse maneuver only the P-51 could do. Shinji smiled. Toji may be a good pilot but he was a better braggart. Turns out the gunner thought Toji was full of shit. 

Asuka fingered the medal in her satchel. It was two hours past the usual time the pilot visited her. She wanted to tell him about that American in the shiny blue-trimmed plane that must've been an ace. She had so few people to relate her problems to these days.....especially since her mother committed suicide. //Don't think about that, that's the past. Leave it at that.// She clutched the medal for an hour more, before surrendering to the night and wandering back to her base.

Continued.......

*Author's notes. Well? You like? I know I suck at anything remotely romantic, but I wanted to portray that even opposing sides can come to a mutual agreement (even if they can't understand each other). Where's Rei and everyone else? At lunch. No, I'll include them the next chapter, fun stuff ahead! 


	2. Embracing Death

Hey yo, here's the second part to the thing I'm writing.......yeah, you know the one. Well, enough chatter, enjoy!

Steel Angels part two: Embracing Death

_You can always tell the fighter pilots....they have that swagger like a personal spotlight is on them all the time. _

Major Misato Katsuragi, Eighth Air Force

__

Shinji pulled his plane out the dive and rolled it onto it's back. The sky around him was red with explosions and tracers, the Mustang pulled into a steep climb, it's guns blazing away at a Me. 109. It rolled and dove towards the ground, making a sharp vertical loop and coming around behind Shinji and letting loose a barrage of 20-mm cannon fire at the blue trimmed fighter.

"They're too maneuverable!" He yelled to his team trying desperately to shake the wing of fighter craft that was blowing the hell out of their bombers. "Drop your fuel tanks!"

Shinji looked out his port side and saw his two squad members release the under-wing fuel tanks to allow their ships more maneuverability. He let his go and spun his P-51 into a half reverse and got behind the 109 that was just a second ago shooting his tail into pieces. It put on it's full throttle and sped away from Shinji's plane.

"Damn you!" Shinji yelled and poured fire into it's receding aft. The engine caught fire and blew, throwing the fuselage into an out of control spin that smashed into another ship going for a run on one of the B-17s. Shinji made sure the bomber was safe and risked a glance above him. Three fighters were converging on Kensuke's ship. 

"Kensuke! Bogeys eleven o' clock!" He yelled and tried to ascend and put himself between them and his friend. He was so concentrated on giving the other P-51 help he almost missed the jerry diving from above, scorching the sky around him with bullets. Shinji swore and pushed his plane into a dive, weaving in and out of flak and the 109's cannon fire. As Shinji neared 2,000 feet he leveled out, the German plane staying with him the whole way. With no other option he jinked and juked around the never ending enemy fire and dove again. Below him was a smoldering pile of bricks- the remains of a building. Shinji throttled to full and yanked the stick all the way back, bringing the plane not but 500 feet above the ground. Shinji rolled his ship upside down and screamed down a ruined street towards the wreckage of the building. One fly-by was all Shinji needed to realized that what he was over was a school, and those six gleaming cylindrical objects stuck amidst the debris and bodies were- "Our drop tanks........" The Me.109 attacked from the clouds above him, guns blaring.

"Shiiiiiiiinji!!" Toji's ship made a head on pass at the opposing enemy and sheared the wings clean off it, the ammunition exploding and taking the rest of the plane with it. "Shinji! You okay, man?" 

"Yo Shinji! Snap outta it!"

"Shinji! Wake up!"

"Lieutenant Ikari! Up and at 'em!"

Shinji peeled his eyelids apart and stared dumbly up at the two uniformed figures standing over him. 

"Well, if the big ace isn't up." Kensuke mocked and took a bite out of a piece of toast.

Toji grabbed Shinji's shirt and hauled him to his feet. "Man, rough night?" He looked over to Kensuke. "Bet his lady friend kept him up...."

Shinji shook his head and steadied himself against the wall. "Come on guys.....I just didn't sleep well."

Toji and Kensuke exchanged unconvinced looks and pulled the poor lieutenant into the barrack's washroom.

"Better get your shower, remember the mission?"

Shinji looked balefully over to Aida. How could he forget, he had stayed up most nights working out the details with the CO. " I know."

"Gonna blow up some choo-choos." Toji smiled. "A milk run."

Shinji sighed as he looked at himself in the mirror. "Don't forget the ground emplacement guns."

"I think you'd better worry about your girlfriend." Kensuke chuckled.

Frowning at his two subordinates' immaturity, Shinji grabbed a towel and headed to the shower stalls.

"Captain Asuka Langley Soryou, due to your recent lack of success, you have been re-assigned to combat patrol Jasta 167." Asuka read the words over again. Not that she wasn't upset by her removal from the Fw-190 squadron- she had punched the deliverer of the official notice- but for once she could shoot at the Yanks and not have to worry about flying the plane. She hated it. "This sucks......" She whined. "Combat patrol my ass."

"Soryou! Officer on deck!" Lieutenant Shigeru yelled, snapping Asuka out of her idle thinking. She stood and saluted crisply.

"At ease soldier." A friendly laid back voice laughed. Asuka looked to the left at the 'officer'.

"Kaji!" She nearly knocked him off his feet with a fierce hug. "I mean- Oberstleutnant Ryoji Kaji, nice to see you're well."

Kaji chuckled. "Come on, Asuka. You can lighten up. No more 'oberstleutnant' for me, nope. I'm out of the service for the time being." He patted his bandaged side.

"Oh! Are you okay?" She asked, overly concerned.

Aoba sighed and muttered something about women being over dramatic. He had to go anyway, the control tower needed him to guide in a formation of Ju-88s. 

"So, re-assigned, huh?" Kaji asked nonchalantly. Asuka 'hmphed' and nodded.

"Just because I was out-flown by some damn American...." She stared crossly at the floor.

Kaji laughed. He had to admit that even with all of her maturity, Asuka was still a little girl used to getting her way. "Well, what are your new orders? I bet the brass are just itching to put you on something utterly miserable."

"Yeah.....I'm on recon patrol of some god-forsaken plot of land no one cares about.......in an 210!!" She whined. "Not like they could at least let me in a Fw-200. And I'm the _subordinate_!" Asuka stomped to her bed and rummaged through her footlocker. "Who are they to make me take orders from a damn Flieger?"

"Come on Asuka. I'm sure you'll love being a subordinate." Kaji laughed as Asuka growled and made a comment about military heavy-weights and a guillotine.

Rei Ayanami wasn't happy. She wasn't necessarily _unhappy_, but she wasn't keen on her new assignment. For the majority of today and yesterday she had been traveling on foot or by train across Germany. Now she was on a train headed north from London, and she was bored. Mentally she went over the mission instructions given to her.

_"Do you understand the mission objectives?" _

Rei nodded. "Hai." 

"Good, report to the number twelve hangar for insertion."

Rei nodded again. She stared at her commanding officer- Gendo Ikari. He was probably the most powerful man in the Japanese military, save for Admiral Yamamoto. To most people Gendo seemed cold, almost uncaring of his subordinates, and yet Rei knew he was doing what was best for his country. Rei also knew he would do what was best for himself. Rei peered at her face in the small room's mirror. Her usually lavender hair was now dark brown, and her piercing red eyes were fitted with blue contact lens'. This was to make her appear more average, more American. Before leaving for the hangar Rei looked disdainfully at the American flight suit and jacket she was garbed in, not only was it covered in mud and dirt, but it was two times to big for her. 

As she walked out into the early morning sun she listened to Dr. Ritsuko Akagi reviewed the mission. First she had to get into an Allied base- The Eighth Air Force Base- She reminded herself. Once there she would have to successfully impersonate a pilot who was downed earlier on in the war and returned from captivity. Commander Ikari assumed that the Americans would be to happy to see their comrade alive they wouldn't notice she was built slightly different than they last remembered, or the fact she could make it across the continent back to England from Russia, where she was stationed now. Commander Ikari's technicians had managed to alter a few American records and flight rosters to include Rei, so everything should go smoothly.

"The plane will drop you off 800 kilometers east from the target. Remember that you will still have to cross the channel." Rei looked to her left, acknowledging the woman in the white lab coat. "Make it to the target at your own discretion."

"I understand."

She stepped into the cargo plane and stared vacantly out the window.

"I am here." Rei said as the train slowed to a stop.

"17:04 p.m. Nothing spotted, continuing as planned." Asuka wrote in the log and turned to the pilot of the Me. 210. "How long do we have to stay out here? I'm bored." She leaned over the pilot's shoulder to look out the forward windscreen.

"We have three more hours of combat patrol, now get back to the gunner's seat." The pilot said and shoved Asuka back into her seat, evoking a string of colorful German.

Asuka stared out the window for about three minutes before becoming bored again. She thought back to what Kaji had told her a few hours before.

_" I HATE this!!" Asuka yelled and stormed across her room in search of something she could break._

"Well, there's only one thing you can do, you know." Kaji said, sitting on the corner of Asuka's bed. "Get promoted."

"Oh, yeah. That'll be REAL easy." Asuka said sarcastically. "And how am I supposed to do that?"

"You could always sleep with the top brass." Kaji shrugged. Asuka growled and chucked her standard white military pillow at him.

"Real mature Kaji." 

Kaji smiled. "Well..." He said. "There's a rumor that Dornier is developing a new fighter. A push pull turboprop deal. I can't make any promises, but I'll try to get you as a test pilot. Maybe that will restore Fuyustuki's confidence in you."

"New fighter, huh? Sounds fun!"

"Hey! Nugget!" The pilot yelled from the cockpit. "Incoming bogeys, eleven o'clock!"

Asuka nodded and smiled. "Right." She grabbed hold of the machine gun yokes and waited for the enemies to become visible. She didn't have to wait very long. Three shiny fighters raced over her plane, spewing 22-mm death.

"Schiess!" Asuka swore and opened fire, missing the last plane by mere feet.

Shinji took in his situation. Somewhere over Germany......low on fuel....and now an enemy bomber. "Suzahara! Kensuke!" He yelled over the comm. "We can't waste time! We have less that thirty percent fuel remaining!"

"C'mon! Let me take a crack at it!" Toji yelled. Without waiting for Shinji's answer he went into a head-long dive at the green plane, strafing bullet holes along the main fuselage. Shinji sighed. After their mission with the trains they had become separated from the group, hopelessly lost. Needless to say Toji needed an outlet for some pent-up frustration.

"Aida, you and me will cover him, and watch out for that rear gun."

The two other P-51s dove into a lazy loop, following Toji's ship from a distance, adding enough of their own fire to prevent the gunner to get a good bead on his plane. However, Asuka didn't much worry about the two other planes, her attention was on Toji's receding aircraft.

"Come on...." She whispered as her targeting receptacle fell over Toji's aft. She was tightening her finger on the trigger when her plane veered violently, causing her shots to go wide. 

"Dammit! Keep the plane straight!" She yelled at the pilot, who was doing his best to drop out of Shinji's line of fire.

"Toji! That's enough, let's get out of here!" Shinji yelled. 

His P-51 made another pass at the German. "No way! They're almost toast!"

"Toji, this is a direct order! Pull back!" Shinji's ship followed Toji's as he went in low at the left wing of the jerry.

"If I can get one last shot in...." 

Asuka's eyes narrowed. "That's right little man, come and get some."

"Toji!" Shinji yelled again, putting a dozen rounds into the green German plane's aft. "Come on!"

Three things happened at once, Toji reluctantly pulled out of his dive, Asuka's cross-hairs centered on his plane's belly, and Asuka fired.

To Shinji it happened in slow motion. Toji's shiny yellow-trimmed Mustang shook, then spewed smoke as a sustained line of fire cascaded into his ship's underside. It rolled towards the ground and disappeared into the cloud layer below them. 

"Toji!!" Shinji poured fire into the bomber's tail as he raced past it, diving after Toji.

Kensuke looked on as Toji's plane was hit, and as Shinji followed it. Cursing, he gave a few more departing shots and throttled up to catch his team leader. "Shinji!"

"I don't see him, Kensuke!" He yelled back, voice frantic. "I lost him in the clouds!"

Aida cleared the last wisps of cloud as Shinji's still diving plane came into view.

"Pull up, man!" He screamed. "Shinji!"

Shinji Ikari wasn't about to leave his friend. He pushed his ship to it's limits, with the wind blowing around him threatening to rip the wings right off his fighter. "Toji...were are you?" He scanned the sky below him for the stricken plane, but to no avail.

"Shinji!" Kensuke's voice yelled over the comm. "Let it go! You'll die too if you don't pull up!"

The blue P-51 made no attempt at pulling out of the dive. "He could still be alive! I'm not leaving him!"

The ground continued rushing up to greet him. 5,000 feet and dropping. 4,500 feet. "Shinji you idiot! Pull up!" Kensuke pleaded.

4,000 feet. 3,500. 3,000.

"I've got to get him! I can't leave him, do you understand?!" Shinji screamed.

2,000 feet.

Kensuke leveled out, no way he was going to die today. "Damn you! Pull out!"

1,000 feet.

Shinji saw the ground, seemingly only inches away from him. It filled his entire view, an endless stretch of green field.

500 feet.

The cockpit canopy cracked. "Dammit!" Shinji cursed. Then he saw it, a tiny speck of orange and glinting metal- Toji's flaming ship.

"Shinji! You're going to crash you moron!"

Without response Shinji leveled his fighter out and began ascending, his eyes wide and face ashen.

"Shinji? You okay man?"

Shinji's cockpit echoed his anguished scream of loss.

Rei Ayanami sat in a confinement cell in an American air force base, just as planned. Right now the technicians were crawling through the British car she had commandeered, inspecting it for anything suspicious. Rei had merely nodded and followed the security guard when she was told she'd be in military custody for a while.

"Rei Ayanami." She turned her head to look at the woman in a red flight jacket and military beret. She flipped through a couple pages on a clipboard.

"Shot down a year ago on a routine mission over the USSR, couldn't confirmed as being a POW, and now back from the dead. Although military records say you piloted a P-47, no one seems to recall your name."

Rei nodded. "I am aware I do not leave much of an impression."

"You want a pass straight home, or you going to stay here?" Misato asked.

Rei hesitated, it would look wrong for her to accept staying in the service to quickly. "I have no home, I shall stay here."

Misato Katsuragi gave the Japanese girl a hard stare. There was something wrong with her....something not right.

"Major!" A corporal ran into the small interrogation room and threw a quick salute. "Vermillion Team is back..." He hesitated. "They lost one."

Misato tried not to look devastated. //Who...Shinji? God, let it not be Shinji.// "Right. Get the appropriate people on standby." She frowned at Rei, like it was somehow her fualt, then hurried off to the hangars.

Shinji sat alone on a bench in the dark hangar, looking up at his P-51. "Well? What now? Do I continue like nothing happened, or do I grieve forever?" The P-51 loomed eerily over him. "Answer me, damn you!" His voice echoed off the concrete walls.

"Shinji?"

Shinji turned around quickly, Major Katsuragi was standing in the doorway. " I heard about Suzahara..."

"Yeah." Shinji said to the floor.

Misato closed the distance between her and the young man. "I know it's tough, losing a friend is always hard. But you can't let it get you down, you have to live to give those Jerries pain."

"What's the point? Every time I get into that thing I feel like everything depends on me and my team. Why do we have to fight this damn war!?"

"Because if you don't the enemy will win, and the world will be hell, do you want that? Would Suzahara want that?"

"I don't care." He mumbled. "I don't care anymore!" 

Continued.......

*Author's notes. No!!!!! Toji's dead! Or is he? Find out next time...heh, heh.


End file.
